Xperia ion Coming to AT&T by June 24

The Xperia ion is finally on its way to the United States, having made stops in Taiwan and Hong Kong already. After six long months, the ion is nearly here.

Today I was in Sony’s flagship store in Century City, CA. Every time I find myself in a Sony store I make a point to ask for any information on the release of the ion. Today I was pleasantly surprised to learn of the imminent launch. The sales rep I spoke to said that it would be released the weekend after Father’s Day. The sales rep was restricted from telling me the specific date, but did tell me that it would be either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday of that week. This was in store, and not a pre-order date. The sales rep said I could walk in and pick the phone up that weekend. This, and another prediction I saw regarding the release date both added up to an in store date of June 24 at the latest.

As we talked, the sales rep went on to say that one of the reasons for the delay was a desire on Sony’s part to release the ion with Ice Cream Sandwich. If this is true, and if they succeeded, the ion may be coming out with Android 4 after all. This would go a long way to silence the dissenters who have so far only griped about the operating system on an otherwise outstanding phone.

Excited as I was upon receiving this information, I looked for any other reference to the 24th. I only found a Twitter comment by Sony about a surprise they have in store for us on June 11. See the tweet here. A lot of speculation so far has been regarding either an Xperia Play 2, or a major improvement to the number of games in the PlayStation Network for Android. I am wondering if this will instead be the pre-order date for the Xperia ion. We will know soon enough.

With the customs delay of the HTC One X and the only recent release of Samsung’s Galaxy S III, I think the Xperia ion will be able to make a very large splash in the coming weeks. Until then, at least we know the wait is nearly over.